


Cohabitation #1

by mutagens



Category: House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
Genre: Is it mastrubation if the house helps?, Labrynths are sexy, Other, Porn with Feelings, fictional non-fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 06:18:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14764226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutagens/pseuds/mutagens
Summary: Unlike the three other films in the series Cohabitation #1 never entered the cannon of film studies, in part because it never circulated beyond select circles, and in other point because when it did surface it was derided as mere pornography. It is of course, pornographic, but does that make it mere pornography? Or like The Navidson Record does there exist a second movie underneath the skin of the original?





	Cohabitation #1

**Author's Note:**

> The poetry in this fic is all variations of On Hedonism by Anne Carson.

ile _The Five and A Half Minute Hallway_ and _Exploration #4_ can both be considered trailers for the full Navidson Record, Cohabitation #1 exists in a strange sense as a supplemental to the whole. It cannot be understood without the Navidson Record as backdrop and context, but it is something wholly different from the film which proceeds it.

Also unlike the three other films in the series Cohabitation #1 never entered the cannon of film studies, in part because it never circulated beyond select circles, and in other point because when it did surface it was derided as mere pornography. It is of course, pornographic, but does that make it mere pornography? Or like The Navidson Record does there exist a second movie underneath the skin of the original?

Cohabitation #1 is a record of a man surrendering to his life inside a house.

 

beauty ~~makes me hopeless. i don’t care~~ ~~~~  
~~why anymore i just want to get away.~~ ~~~~  
~~when i look at the city of paris i long~~ ~~  
~~~~to wrap my legs around it. when i~~ ~~~~

 ~~watch you dancing there~~ is a heartless  
~~immensity like a~~ sailor in a dead calm  
sea ~~. desires as round as peaches~~ ~~~~  
~~bloom in me all night, i no longer~~ ~~  
~~~~gather what falls.~~ ~~~~

Navidson sits in the black labyrinth and waits. There is a full minute which is just his breathing. His talent for choosing moments extends to the length of this one. The viewer sits with him as he realizes there is nothing left to do.

“I can’t get out,” He says to a point just off screen. “its chasing me and I’ve been lost for days. I don’t know what I can do any more. The children are gone, Karen is gone. It’s just me down here. I guess that’s why I’m no longer scared.”

 He breaths some more, ragged despite the calm in his voice. Between his breaths you can hear the sound of something huge and lumbering moving towards him.

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life here,” Navidson says, not to anyone but to the cavern of the house which encloses him.

           

 ~~beauty makes me hopeless.~~ i don’t care  
why ~~anymore i just want to get away.~~ ~~~~  
~~when i look at the city of paris i long~~ ~~  
~~~~to wrap my legs around it. when i~~ ~~~~

 ~~watch you dancing~~ there is a heartless  
immensity ~~like a sailor in a dead calm~~ ~~~~  
~~sea. desires as round as peaches~~ ~~~~  
~~bloom~~ in me ~~all night, i no longer~~ ~~  
~~~~gather what falls.~~

           

Cohabitation #1 is made up of long lingering shots, tender things that treat their subjects kindly, connected by a grey matter of short images.

The yellow light of headlights spilled over a ceiling.

A white knuckled hand (Navidson’s) on a pale thigh (Unidentified).

Awindow half emerged from a wall.

An opening door.

Bed clothes piled on the floor.

Navidson lying in bed, again not looking at the camera. The light in the room is diffuse, and the long limbs of his body shimmer slightly in the light. This is his bed room, the one he once shared with Karen, but he is alone and the room has morphed around him. The door and windows have gone. The walls are a pale blue there never were before, the color of an empty house. The place Navidson thought would be his fresh start has become an enclosure.

The light in the room warms, becomes tender. Navidson sighs and the house groans with him. He shifts and the house shifts with him, shaking the camera from where it sits on a side table looking out across the desert of the bed.

The camera catches the movement of his hand as he pulls back the blankets to reveal that he’s hard, has been hard the whole time he lay there soaking in the light of the house’s heart, soaking in the cold gaze of the camera. He takes his hand and rubs it along his cock quickly and without preamble.

The lines of his neck, which were already taught, get stretch as he pushes his hips into the next stroke. His hand rubs up over the head of his dick and he gasps a little. His other hand scrabbles at the bed looking for purchase. His strokes as he brings himself closer are even and methodical, but sounds he makes are rough and desperate.

He is not deliberately putting on a show, not for the camera at least, but maybe for the house. He moves his hand down, fingers his own balls, and his back arches a little. It’s good for him, pulling himself off though its clear from his face that he wishes it weren’t this good, wishes he didn’t have to bite his lip to keep from moaning as he strokes himself. His teeth make little white indents in his lower lip.

He spent his life time behind a camera, but now that he is in front of one it treats him well. He is a beautiful man. He limbs are long and his muscle tones enough to stand out in stark relief. When he pushes his leg into the mattress, trying to fight off orgasm, you can see the good years of travel and walking have done him.

He fucks up into his own hand twice more and then cums, panting. He lays there for a moment after that. The house moans with him. The boards and plaster expand and contract echoing his stifled moans as best a voiceless building can.

“This is what you have done to me,” he says to the house, “there used to be someone else but now there is just me. I do what I need to do and you mock me. Do you enjoy it, watching me do this alone?”

He turns over then, his cock and his words both spent. His back fills the frame for a moment and then the camera clicks off.

 

 ~~beauty makes me hopeless. i don’t care~~ ~~~~  
~~why anymore~~ i just want ~~to get away.~~ ~~~~  
~~when i look at the city of paris i long~~ ~~  
~~~~to wrap my legs around it. when i~~ ~~~~

 ~~watch you dancing there is a heartless~~ ~~~~  
~~immensity,~~ like a sailor in a dead calm  
sea. desires ~~as round as~~ peaches  
~~bloom in me all night, i no longer~~ ~~  
~~~~gather what falls~~ ~~~~

A red door opens into blackness.

A yellow door opens into a sea of red.

A vault door opens into an unending gray.

A crumbling wooden door opens into a blind brightness.

These series of doors serve both a literal purpose and a metaphorical one. They demonstrate the literal internal geography of the house. The vast seas of color behind each door show that however real this tour is, is there something greater than can really be conveyed. The house contains spaces as large as thought. There are other worlds in there. These places literally exist, even if they cannot be fully captured, recorded trapped or understood, they can at the very least be filmed.

There is that small level of truth to them.

Beyond the physical, these series of doors represent an unfolding of feeling and thought. It would easy to say that both The Navidson Record and Cohabitation #1 represent a simple horror narrative. They both concern the inescapable nature of labyrinths. They both drip with that particular desolation that only an empty house can bring. They both concern themselves with the heavy, sometimes even claustrophobic, feeling of some relationships.

Yet, Cohabitation #1 is not a prison break film. There is no pressure to escape. In shot after shot we find Navidson sitting or standing against walls or in the middle rooms. In one shot he leans against the wall of the great staircase, breathing heavily, having paused in his assent. In another he sits with his legs swinging on the edge of a ledge, a great cliff comparable to any great cliff nature has created, but locked within the house. Instead, image after image of stillness and resignation pile up on each other.

Who sets up these shots? Who presses record? Who takes time to consider the beauty in his isolation? Certainly ~~,~~ not Navidson who seems continually caught unawares. He rarely looks at the camera. We catch glimpses of his neck, his shoulders, his cheek bones, the shape of his eyelids, but we, the viewers, rarely catch his attention. We are below notice. He is focused on something, further out and further in.

There is no sound in the film except the sound of the house and the sound of Navidson breathing. There are no words. There are no voices. There is only silence and breath. It is this silence, this breath without motion that unfolds in Cohabitation #1. 

 

beauty makes me ~~hopeless. i don’t care~~ ~~~~  
~~why anymore i just~~ want to get away.  
~~when i look at the city of paris i long~~  
to wrap my legs around ~~it. when i~~ ~~~~

 ~~watch you dancing there is a~~ ~~heartless~~ ~~~~  
immensity ~~like a sailor in a dead calm~~ ~~~~  
~~sea. desires as round as peaches~~ ~~~~  
~~bloom in me all night, i no longer~~  
~~gather what falls.~~

 

This is one of the few shots that Navidson is clearly responsible for. He walks along a black and featureless hallway. One hand holds the camera out before him, looking back. The other drags across the wall as he walks forward.

Slowly, almost unnoticeably, the walls begin to close in. Navidson keeps walking even when a normal person might have turned back in fear. His face is a mask of determination. It is only when he must turn his body sideways and start shuffling along that he begins to show fear. He keeps going.

There is a moment where he is still free where he realizes he is well and truly stuck and he fights it. He bucks his shoulders and tries to pull back but there is nowhere to go. He is caught. With a sliding of stone more like a sigh than anything else, the walls move in so that he cannot move at all and then they stop.

The camera is focused on his face. It catches tiny eddies in his expression as he realizes and the subsequently understands what has happened to him. He is angry. Then he is afraid, terrified, full to bursting with a deep and terrible claustrophobia. Fat tear rolls down his face and he scrunches up his nose. He sobs. It is hard to watch a man cry like that, but it is cathartic, for Navidson as well as the viewer.

The house was clearly waiting for him to calm because it only after he has wrung all the tears and fear out of himself that the walls moves. It happens off camera but from the look of pain and pleasure on Navidson’s face it is not hard to guess where the house has chosen to press. His makes a soft sound of pleasure, then another. After a moment of this he drops the camera, but the walls catch it between them. Now, one can see his torso and hips as well as his face, pressed between the walls.

Navidson comes undone quickly. All the fear on his face is replaced by desperate pleasure. His hands skate along the featureless walls looking for purchase. He moves his hips as far as the house will allow, trying to get friction with the wall. His mouth falls open as he starts to plead with the walls, with the house, with anyone who will listen.

“Please… please” he babbles, “let me… It’s just been me down here… I need this… please.”

The walls give him no options. He can’t pull away, he can’t move himself against them like he clearly wants to. He has to surrender to the slow-moving pressure of the house grinding against him. The house holds him as it gets him off. Minute by minute his cries get less comprehensible and more like primal pleas and his body leans more and more into the house’s embrace. Navidson is overcome.

This is the longest shot in Cohabitation #1. It takes nearly five minutes for Navidson to cum, and when he does its shakes every part of his body. He moans into the wall and presses his hands so hard against it that his knuckles turn white with the pressure and with the pleasure.

“God, god, god,” He says to house, like it is the one who will answer his prayer.

He looks like a different man after he cums. There was tension in his joints at the beginning of the shot. He walked down the hallway like he was mad of metal bands, his shoulders hunched up, and his knees clicking into place. After, when he slumps against the wall, it is like all that tension was pressed out of him between those two unyielding expanses of black stone. He closes his eyes, relaxed, and sleeps in the cradle of the house,’s arms.

 

 ~~beauty makes me~~ ~~hopeless. i don’t care~~ ~~~~  
~~why anymore ~~ i just want to ~~get away.~~ ~~~~  
~~when i look at the city of paris i long~~  
~~to wrap my legs around it. when i~~

watch you dancing ~~there is a heartless~~ ~~~~  
~~immensity~~ like a sailor in ~~a dead calm~~ ~~~~  
~~sea. desires as round as peaches~~  
bloom ~~in me all night, i no longer~~ ~~  
~~~~gather what falls~~.

 

How long was Navidson alone in the house? There is no exact record of how much time Navidson spent in the house from an outside perspective, but even if we did have a number there is no grantee that it would have any correlation to Navidson’s actual lived experience. It is quite likely he spent years in the Labyrinth. Did he eat? Did he sleep? Or did he simply wander endlessly, looking for the magic thread that would lead him out again.

In the jumble of shots contained in the final montage of Cohabitation #1 a certain relationship between Navidson and the house becomes clear. They fuck like an old married couple, slow and without hurry. It is odd to say that a man and a piece of architecture fuck, but it is the assumption on which most scholarship surrounding Cohabitation #1 is based.

Certainly, Navidson is depicted in various stages of intimacy with the house. The careful viewer can catch moments when Navidson’s mouth moves to whisper something to a wall or a door way. Many have suggested that he whispers sweet nothings to the house. Perhaps those words are pleas to let him out, or maybe they are pleas to let him further in and show him the truth that lies within the labrynth. Whatever he says the camera doesn’t pick it up and his relationship with the house remains identified only in that jumble of images.

A few second glimpse of his legs spread before a dark orifice in the wall. A completely white shot that carries to us the sound of his breathless moans, and the creaking of the house moaning with him. An image of a pale hand on black stone. Him sitting in the labyrinth dripping with the light that comes from somewhere above and illuminates him like he is a lantern in the dark. Each shot building upon the shaky ground of Navidson’s unspooling.

 

 ~~beauty makes me hopeles~~ ~~. i don’t care~~  
~~why anymore i just want to get away.~~ ~~~~  
~~when~~ i look at the city of ~~paris i long~~ ~~  
~~~~to wrap my legs around it. when i~~ ~~~~

 ~~watch you dancing there is a heartless~~ ~~~~  
~~immensity like a sailor in a dead calm~~ ~~~~  
~~sea. ~~ desires ~~as round as peaches~~ ~~~~  
~~bloom in me all night, i~~ no longer  
~~gather what falls.~~ ~~~~

Navidson runs. He sprints through the halls. He reaches the edge of the cliff he once sat on. He jumps. He trusts the house to catch him. To move its hallways, to move the space and time contained within it, to gather him close and safe.


End file.
